


Sight

by Jade_Sabre



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Colonist (Mass Effect), Gen, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 04:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Sabre/pseuds/Jade_Sabre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jasmine's parents were dreamers, but their daughter couldn't see it.  An origin story for Acidqueen's Jasmine Shepard, written on the occasion of the 2013 Mass Effect Holiday Cheer Gift Exchange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Acidqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acidqueen/gifts).



> This is a bit late, but in some cultures it's still the holiday season!
> 
> I was inspired by [this post](http://acidshenko.tumblr.com/post/65874167741/these-are-some-of-my-custom-sheps-jasmine-up) about Acidqueen's Shepards and a conversation with my optometrist-in-training beta. Any liberties I have taken too far or details I have gotten wrong are entirely my fault. I hope you don't mind other people writing about your Shepards, and I hope you enjoy the story!
> 
> Massive thanks to the dear LoquaciousQuark, not only for the usual betas, but also for all the medical information. Again, any mistakes I have made are mine alone.

Jasmine's parents were dreamers.

That's what her grandmother said when she came to visit for the first and last time, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders as she stood shivering on the front porch. “Dreamers,” she snorted, peering out at the foggy surroundings, “lost in a mist.”

“Isn't it beautiful?” her father said.

“Fitting,” was all her grandmother said.

There wasn't much to see on Mindoir. Outside the air itself was thick and grey and so was the ground, wet and cold to the point that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Jasmine didn't spend much time outside; the dim scattered light hurt her eyes, and she didn't like to wear her dumb dark glasses that dimmed the whole world. Her brothers and father would spend their days tromping about and she would sit inside with her mother and listen to stories on her omni-tool, since she couldn't focus on the tiny lights of its display. Sometimes her mother would go out too, if the work was too much, and then she'd be alone and the house would be her castle and she would be its knight, the fire poker her sword, the rumbly dehumidifier in the front hall her trusty steed.

A few days after her grandmother arrived, the rest of her family stepped into the thick dark rubber suits that let them wade through the deepest parts of the marsh outside, pulling on the thick insulated rubber gloves and fitting goggles over their eyes and breathers over their mouths, turning them into the sort of bog monsters Jasmine worried about, saw in the wavering shadows beyond their house. But then her father saw her watching and shoved his goggles up, crouched before her, and put his rubbery hands on her shoulders.

“Well, sir knight,” he said, as he always said, “it's up to you to protect the castle.”

“What about Grandmother?” she asked, concentrating on the comfort in his twinkling eyes.

“Treat her as you would treat a princess,” he said. “We won't be long,” and he kissed her on the forehead, then stood and readjusted his goggles. “Ready?”

“Ready,” her brothers chorused, and her mother nodded, and then Jasmine stepped back out of the foyer and closed the clear door and watched as their blurry figures stepped out into the wet and the dark and disappeared into the mist. She closed her eyes and pressed the button that would turn on the porch light, and turned back into the dimness of the house, heading for the fireplace.

Her grandmother had taken residence at the kitchen table, covering it with scraps of fabric and twists of yarn, her hands constantly moving, her mouth constantly pursed. Leo and Brent, after a few close calls with muddy boots, avoided the room, but Jasmine dragged a stool to the table and perched next to her grandmother, the fire poker across her lap. Too close, the light from her grandmother's work lamp hurt her eyes, but if she squinted she could watch as her grandmother cut out shapes and stitched them together on her machine. She liked the closeness of the work, the detail of it, liked that she could make out the patterns and colors.

“Put that filthy thing back where it belongs,” her grandmother said, not looking up from her work.

“It's my sword,” Jasmine said.

Her grandmother snorted, and then for a long while there was only the crackle of the fire and the whir of the sewing machine. Ever-vigilant, but increasingly bored, Jasmine eventually shifted her poker to one hand so that she could reach out and touch one of the half-finished squares on the table, running her finger over the border between a white triangle and a dark blue one dotted with blurs she couldn't quite make out.

“Careful,” her grandmother said, not quite a snap, and she withdrew her hand and nearly overbalanced. “Your hands are dirty.”

“What are you making?”

“A quilt,” her grandmother answered, pausing the whir of the machine to take out a few pins and push them into a small ball by her hand. “A patchwork quilt. When it's through all the squares make a pattern.”

“Patterns repeat,” Jasmine said. “Like white and blue and white and blue and white and blue.”

“Yes.”

“What pattern is this?”

“This,” her grandmother said, pausing again in order to pick up a finished square, “is called an eight-pointed star.”

Jasmine traced the points in the air. “What's a star?”

Her grandmother's eyes were dark and easy to make out in her otherwise confusingly wrinkled face, and Jasmine was pretty sure she was frowning. “Stars are bright spots of light in the sky. But you've never seen them, have you? But you wouldn't, in this miserable swamp.” She looked Jasmine up and down and said, “You wouldn't be able to see them if they were shining on the ceiling over your bed. I've read about it, you know,” she said, “your condition. They could treat it back on Earth, but your parents won't hear of you coming with me.”

Jasmine wasn't sure what to say, and after looking at her for another moment, her grandmother sighed again and went back to her quilt. She wanted to take her poker to the big bucking dehumidifier, to climb upon it and ride it to parts unknown, to go to her room and turn on her reader and turn off the lights and listen to stories of dragon slayings and kings and queens and gold and—and stars, and all the things she'd only heard of in books, but in the books she could be _there_ and not here. But she'd made a promise, and so she guarded her grandmother until her family returned and her father rubbed his muddy hand all in her hair and her mother scolded him and her brothers teased her with stories of all the monsters they'd encountered and they were home and she was safe.

“Mama,” she said that night, as her mother tucked her into bed, her trusty home-sewn animals all around her, a horse and a rabbit and a cat, as foreign as the dragons in her storybooks. “Am I going to Earth?”

Her mother sighed and kissed her forehead. “No, darling,” she said, “you're staying right here.”

“Good,” she said, and her mother smiled, and then left her alone in the dark.

After two more weeks her mother's words proved true; her grandmother packed up her things and stood waiting in the front hall for Jasmine's father to bring his swamper around to take her to the spaceport a day's travel away. Finally convinced she would not be packed into her grandmother's suitcase, she stood next to it, waiting for her grandmother to go, for life to return to normal.

“I've left the quilt for you,” her grandmother said abruptly. “It's on your bed. Should be warm in this...weather.”

“Thank you,” Jasmine said uncertainly.

“Thought you ought to see the stars,” her grandmother said. “Probably the only ones you'll ever see.”

Her father threw open the front door, letting in a blast of cold wet air, and hustled to pick up the suitcases. “Come on, Mother,” he said, “the fog's a bit lighter right now.”

“Goodbye!” Leo and Brent called from the front porch, and her mother waved from the kitchen, and Jasmine said, “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” her grandmother said, reaching with one wrinkled hand to touch her cheek, briefly, and then they were out the door and it closed behind them and the chill wore away and Jasmine went to her room and lay on her bed and traced every point of every star and wanted, for the first time, to see them herself.

   
-.-.-

Mindoir had been one of the first habitable worlds discovered, just off a relay in what the Systems Alliance would later learn was the Attican Traverse, and the Shepards had been one of the first families to volunteer to colonize it. Though oxygenated, the world needed serious terraforming before it would be suitable for mass colonization, and while the authorities had been leery of allowing a family with young children to be part of the process, Jasmine's father had paid every fee and fine required to give his wife and two boys a chance among the stars.

That chance involved helping to drain the super-saturated atmosphere and half-sunken earth so that people with more resources might settle on solid ground, but that did not dim their enthusiasm. The homesteads were scattered at strategic intervals across the areas of the planet deemed most hospitable centered around rural spaceports, where from time to time ships would arrive with supplies and leave with Mindoir's most profitable export. Space stations and ships alike, reliant on recycled hydration systems, paid good money for the prospect of fresh, clean water from an unspoiled world, and though the money went straight to repairing equipment or the occasional treat for the family, it still ensured that the Shepards could stay on Mindoir.

“Moisture farmers,” Jasmine's father would say with a grin. “We're _moisture_ farmers.”

Jasmine was the first baby born on Mindoir, though it had taken a few months to verify the fact, as her mother spent most of the pregnancy on the homestead with the occasional doctor visit. It had taken several more months for her parents to realize that their third child was not quite the same, not quite normal, and their arguments over what to do spanned many a cold dark Mindoir night. In the end the realities of spending their savings on colony life won out, and they consoled themselves that the light on Mindoir was not so bright, and if their daughter's eyes were never steady enough to focus, well, no one on Mindoir could see through the fog anyway.

And so Jasmine and her brothers grew up in the mists of Mindoir, her brothers in the marsh with their father, she in the dim light of her room, listening to fiction and schooling alike. And if every day the fog grew a little brighter, it only meant that civilization was a little closer than it had been before.

   
-.-.-

By the time Jasmine was a teenager, the fog outside had mostly lifted to a low-hanging cloud cover; the higher the clouds, the more colonists came, the faster the clouds receded. She could walk farther from the house without sinking into the ground, but their nearest neighbor was still several miles away. Where once she'd been able to play with her brothers outside for short periods, now she had to wear her glasses and long sleeves and pants even in the sticky humidity that came with the rising heat. The threat of bog monsters had vanished with the mist, and yet for her the world remained a blur, full of familiar shapes, but frustratingly beyond clarity. Even her own face in the mirror was something of a stranger, individual features she could piece together upon close inspection, but overall merely an impression of blandness, pale and barely worth the notice.

“And what does the birthday girl want for breakfast?” her mother asked as she came down yawning.

“Pancakes,” she said automatically, circling the kitchen table before hopping on the old worn stool next to the stove. “And gene therapy.” Her mother's stirring lost its rhythm for the briefest of moments, and Jasmine took that moment to pounce. “We've been studying it, and so I did some research on the extranet—”

“Jas—”

“—and they've been doing amazing things for the past _century_ , Mom, we're just so far behind—”

“Jas—”

“—but if we would just _leave—_ ”

“Who's leaving?” came her father's voice, and he soon followed, wiping sweat off his forehead and dusting his hands on his coveralls. “Good morning, birthday girl, and mother of the birthday girl,” he said, kissing each on the cheek. “Brent, wish your sister a happy birthday.”

“Happy birthday,” said her brother, handing her a sweaty, dirty handkerchief that she promptly waved in her mother's face. “That's for you!”

“See? See this dirty thing?” she said, doing her best to focus on her mother's face. “Mindoir's not even nice anymore. It's hot and gross and we'd be better off somewhere else.”

“Well, I don't know about that,” her father said, washing his hands in the sink. “Your brother, sure. But all of Mindoir?”

“Go shower, both of you, and then we'll have breakfast,” her mother said, and Jasmine watched her mother watch them go, good-naturedly shoving each other up the stairs, and then fix her gaze on her daughter. The lines of her face never quite resolved, but Jasmine had spent her whole life learning her mother's expressions within their blurred boundaries, and this one was displeased. “I wish you would stop asking to go off-world.”

“But it's my best chance,” Jasmine pleaded. “And Leo's already moved to the spaceport and Brent wouldn't mind going too, and then you and Dad can sell this place and—”

“Your father doesn't want to sell,” her mother said, looking away, ladling pancakes onto the griddle. “We've invested more years of our lives here than you've had, birthday girl or no.”

“Yes! You've had your fun,” Jasmine said. “But what about _me_?”

Her mother sighed, and behind it was the quiet rush of water that meant someone had turned on the shower. “Your brother doesn't want to move to the city.”

“I've heard about cities, Mom, and Port Eisley definitely does not qualify,” she said. “And I want to see cities! You've seen them and then you came here and I've never seen a single one, and I want to go off-world and I want to _see_ , Mom—”

“Jasmine,” she said, “it's not as simple as that.”

“Why not?” she demanded, dropping the handkerchief on the floor so that she could cross her arms. “I know you got the place on credit but if you'd just _sell—_ ”

“Pick that up and put it in the laundry basket,” her mother said.

“It's my birth—” She stopped at the look on her mother's face and did as she was told, though she took her time, walking as slowly over to the laundry basket in the corner of the kitchen as she could. As she turned back she saw her mother watching her, too far to make out her expression, but she heard another sigh, quieter, and said, “What?”

Her mother said nothing as she came back to her stool, but as she hopped back up her mother said, “You're sixteen. I suppose that's old enough.”

“Old enough for what?” called her father from the stairs. She could smell that his clothes were fresh, and as he came closer she saw him running a towel through his hair. “If you're talking about dating boys, let me preface it with the fact that you will _never_ be old—”

“We didn't just buy the homestead on credit,” her mother said, looking to her father as she said it. Jasmine couldn't tell what they were discussing with their eyes—and that was another thing she'd never be able to do, and she opened her mouth to complain—but her mother looked back to her, and she closed it instead. “We promised to hold it for twenty years.”

Jasmine blinked. “Twenty _years_?” she said.

“That's how long they figured the first phase of terraforming would take,” her father said, the normal laughing tone in his voice gone. “And we're a bit ahead of schedule, but not enough. Not yet.”

“We tried,” her mother said, “to get out of it, but we had to fight so hard just to _get_ here, and your disabilities aren't life-threatening, and especially with all the fog they just weren't—”

“They didn't understand,” her father said. “They thought you'd have it easy. And you know, Jas, you make it look easy, but I know—” and Jasmine had never heard her father's voice so rough, as he slipped an arm around her shoulders “—I know it's not, and maybe sometimes I forget. And I'm sorry, sweetheart. It's hard, and I know it's hard.”

She leaned into his hug, into the warm strength of his shoulder, blinking furiously. “But if you knew it'd be hard,” she said, and she looked up at her mother, “and you knew you'd be stuck here, why didn't you just send me with Grandmother?”

“Because,” her mother said, slowly, “I was—afraid.”

“We didn't know what the gene mods would do to you,” her father said. “We didn't know if helping one thing would harm another—we didn't want doctors making decisions about your future without us—and you were so young—”

“And you were my beautiful baby girl,” her mother said, and her face was sad, “and I wouldn't have you any other way.”

“Couldn't leave your mother here all by herself with us boys, now could you?” her father said, the joking tone back, and something about it made Jasmine jerk away from him.

“You didn't think about what it would be like for me,” she said, crossing her arms, dropping off the stool so she could stand and glare at them, though she knew her constantly-moving eyes would lessen the intensity of her frown, and suddenly she _hated_ them, hated that they'd loved her too much to send her away. “You were selfish.”

“We were,” her mother said quietly. “And I'm sorry.”

“Two more years,” her father said. “Two more years, and the contract will be up, and we can sell this place and take you wherever you want go.”

“That's two _years_ ,” she said.

“I know,” he said, spreading his hands and shrugging. “It's all I have. I'm sorry.”

She turned her head, looking at anything, _anything_ , willing it to be clear, not that she even really knew what that looked like, not that looking gave her headaches the way it had before she'd learned to compensate—and it _was_ hard, and she was tired of it, and knowing that she could be normal if someone would just take a moment and take her _away—_

“This is the gloomiest birthday bunch I've ever seen,” Brent said, leaning in the doorway. “Mom, the pancakes are burning.”

Her mother yelped and started scraping at the griddle, ordering her brother not to just stand there, but _do_ something, and in the chaos her father forced his arm back around her shoulders and murmured, “Two more years. You can guard the castle that long, can't you, my brave knight?”

“ _Dad_ ,” she said, trying to pull away again, but he held firm.

“I know it's a lot,” he said. “And I'm sorry. Truce?”

She stood still and watched the steam rising from the griddle as Brent splashed water on it, much to her mother's dismay. “Truce,” she said, but she pulled away and said, “Let me know when breakfast is ready,” even as she ran to the stairs, took them two at a time, didn't stop until she was in her room with her back against the door, staring at the stupid stars on her stupid quilt until the stupid blurry sight was so hidden by tears that she could only bury her face in her arms and sob.

   
-.-.-

In the end, they had two more months.

If Jasmine had known it would only be two more months, she would have spent less time sulking, less time in her room listening to everything she could about the medical facilities at nearby colonies; her parents might have respected her privacy less, might have forced her to come down for card game night or to stay longer at the table when Leo came to visit. Hindsight was 20/20, or so the saying went, but on the many sleepless nights that followed, Jasmine couldn't settle on what she should have done, just that she should have done— _something_.

But what happened was that the batarians came, landing their shuttles at each of the spaceports, heedlessly smashing the carefully constructed docking ports, taking what prisoners they could grab and shooting those too far away. The homesteads might have been safe, had not a recent population boom created a need for high-speed trains to reach the newer settlements, and there might have been an alarm, had not the batarians immediately recalled all the trains in order to slaughter the passengers before boarding themselves. Not that the homesteaders knew any of this; not that the Shepards knew Leo was dead at his traffic control station while his coworker slumped unconscious with an implant jammed into her skull even as the slavers stepped over their bodies and into the trains.

As one of the oldest homesteads, the Shepards were the first stop on the A-line, which they'd only noticed inasmuch as it enabled them to make the trip to the spaceport and back in half a day, which both allowed Jasmine to make the trip to see her brother and her father to come home in the evenings whenever a shipment was due. Her father complained about the traffic, and the neighbors, but Jasmine liked to watch the train from her window, squinting against the flashes of light as it blurred through, comforted by the fact that nobody could focus on something going so fast. And that's where she was when they came, sitting in her room, waiting for the twelve o'clock train to unload its passengers and be on its way—but it stayed, and it stayed, and she couldn't make out any details but she could see something moving, coming towards the house.

“Mom?” she yelled from her doorway. “Is someone coming over today?”

Her mother emerged from the downstairs office, tapping at something on her omni-tool. “Not that I know of,” she said. “But your father doesn't always—”

Jasmine couldn't make out her mother's expression, but she heard clearly the catch in her voice, the suddenness of the following silence. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” her mother said, in the most un-nothing voice she'd ever heard. “Go back to your room.”

“Why?” she said, coming down the stairs instead. “What's up?”

“Your brother just sent me a message,” her mother said, voice still tight, looking down at her screen, but this close Jasmine could see her narrowed eyes, the worry in her mouth. “It's nothing. Go to your room.”

“Mom—”

“ _Now_ ,” her mother said, raising her eyes just enough to meet Jasmine's, and so Jasmine started up the stairs, backwards, holding onto the railing on either side.

“But what's so—”

“Dear God,” her mother whispered, and then, “Jasmine, _go_ ,” and before Jasmine could blink her mother had run into the kitchen, and so she finished going up the stairs, crouching down behind the half-wall on the landing, peeking around the corner, between the bannisters, wishing she could see the front door, having to content herself with half the kitchen and the living room.

There were several crashes, and her mother emerged from the kitchen holding—a shotgun, up against her shoulder, pointing it towards the foyer, and then “It's just me, Mom, it's just me,” and Brent appeared with his hands held up, and her mother let the gun fall to her side long enough to hug him.

“Where's your father?” her mother asked, and Jasmine could hear the fear, was afraid herself for the first time since the mists had gone and taken the bogmen with them.

“They have guns, Mom,” Brent said, and he sounded terrified. “I tried—”

Several loud thuds reverberated throughout the house, and her mother shoved Brent behind her, for all that he was several inches taller than she, aiming her shotgun towards the foyer. “I locked the door,” he said. “I didn't see Dad, he just told me to—”

“Go upstairs,” her mother said, her voice shaky. “Go upstairs and keep your sister safe.”

“Mom—”

“Brent, _please_ ,” she said, and Jasmine shrank back against the wall, a shaking hand over her mouth, tears brushing the tips of her fingers. The thuds came again, echoed in the thump of Brent's boots on the stairs as he ran past without seeing her, disappearing into their parents' bedroom. Jasmine tried to scramble to her feet, but her knees wouldn't hold, and so she went flat on her stomach and peeked around the corner, looking down at her mother pointing the shotgun at the door. There were more thuds, followed by the sound of shattering glass, and Jasmine's stomach dropped as though the floor had disappeared beneath her and she was falling with no hope of standing again.

“ _Shit_ ,” Brent said, thumping into the half-wall and sliding down next to her, fumbling to load bullets into a manual handgun. “Go to your room, Jazzy.”

She tried to answer, but she couldn't find her breath, couldn't move, and only managed a “Why?”

“Batarians,” he said, “though what they want with our—”

Another crash—the door to the foyer, Jasmine thought, dreamily—and then a deep, rough voice, said something, and her mother's omni-tool translated it automatically. “Drop your weapon.”

“I don't think so,” Jasmine's mother said, and Jasmine couldn't see more than the blurry outline of her mother, couldn't hear any fear in her voice, though Brent's breathing was heavy in her ear.

“Drop it,” said the voice, and in response Jasmine's mother fired and even as that blast echoed in her ears there was another one and Jasmine's breath wisped from her in a sigh as her mother rocked back on her feet once, then crumpled, the gun clattering as it fell out of her hands.

“ _Mom_ ,” Brent cried, and then he threw himself to his feet, firing down where Jasmine couldn't see, but she could hear the pop of his gun and the blast of the others and then abruptly his stopped and he slumped, half-leaning over the wall, and even as Jasmine tried desperately to breathethrough her terrified hiccups and gasps something wet trickled onto her leg, and suddenly she was flailing, her limbs moving almost beyond her control as she tried to sit, to press herself into the wall, but the wet kept dripping and she didn't want to look at her hands but they were splattered with red, red on her pale white skin, and she couldn't breathe she couldn't _breathe_ —

Another gravelly voice spoke, just different enough to distinguish it from the first, not that it mattered, but then _her_ omni-tool helpfully said, “There's another heat signature,” and she froze in a tangle of legs, her hands curling against the hard floor, and then there were hard noises of metal on the hard stairs and she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to be still, don't-move-don't-breathe-don't-think, but something kicked her and she fell over, her face hitting the floor, stinging a dazed sort of sense into her terror.

“Doesn't look like much,” said the first voice through her omni-tool, and slowly she turned her head until she could see the boot that had kicked her, tried to look farther up, but nothing would come into focus. “Looks different.”

She put her palms flat against the floor to do—what? but another boot kicked her over onto her back, her head smacking into the floor and her arms and legs curling in on themselves, face screwed up in pain. “Look at me,” the second voice said, but the scanner it shone in her face was a bright light and she yelped against her will, trying to turn her aching head away. It kicked her in the ribs and suddenly she was crying, sobbing, holding her side, begging _please stop please stop_.

“Defective,” the first one said. “Not worth the trouble. Shoot it?”

Her eyes flew open—and she didn't know how she could be more scared, how this threat of impending death was worse than all the others—and she saw a—a monster, blurry and awful, with shadows in all the wrong places, the color of the bog of her childhood, and she couldn't even _see_ the damn thing that was going to kill her and she was scared and she was going to die scared and then second one snorted and said, “Not worth the trouble. It'll die soon enough.”

She didn't understand, could only hear a horrible keening, a thick snotty breathless cry, and even as she heard herself begging the first one's boot connected with her head and she saw—nothing.

 

Her omni-tool saved her life, its sad lonely signal catching the attention of an Alliance search and rescue patrol though she'd done everything she could to avoid them, to avoid anything, hadn't moved from the spot where her dead brother's weight slowly slid down the wall next to her. She couldn't see—her eyes wouldn't stop moving, worse than she'd ever known—and so she'd sat and waited to die, and instead they stabbed her with a tranquilizer and she woke up aboard a spaceship, heading for Elysium.

   
-.-.-

“You sustained quite the concussion,” the medical officer said, as she tried to take it all in, the cool reflective surfaces, the constantly-moving displays, how everything was grey and white. “We had to give you an injection to calm that nystagmus down, and if you don't mind me saying so it's been—well, there aren't many people like you out there anymore. I know several ophthalmologists who would just _love_ to get their hands—but they won't,” he said hastily, as she narrowed her eyes, as he came close enough for her to focus—and she _could_ , sort-of, with him leaning over her to check her IV, could distinguish where the line of his jaw ended and the wall behind him began, though the wall was as blurry as anything she'd ever seen. “I'm sorry, you don't need me babbling—”

“Damn straight,” said a new voice, and she turned her head to see a uniformed woman entering the room. “That will be all, Patrick.”

“Yes ma'am,” he said, and then he left and the woman came close enough for Jasmine to see the tabs on her jacket, though she didn't know what they meant.

“Now,” the woman said, running her hands across displays over Jasmine's head, “let's see how you're doing. Vitals all seem good, swelling in the head's gone down, eye response is—” she shone a bright light in Jasmine's eyes, and what had been an ignorable ache turned into a searing pain and what had been a forgotten memory suddenly came rushing upon her, Brent and her mother and monsters and she felt sputtering sobs bubbling up within her and tried to breathe, tried to force it down. “Good. You're responding well to the medication. That's good.”

“What about,” she tried to say, though it came out as a whisper, and the woman paused in her work and looked down at her, and this close Jasmine could sort-of see green eyes in a face she thought of as aristocratic, not that she'd thought of princesses in years, but it made her think of her family and so she tried to say, “Dad,” but it came out as a blubber, and she didn't want to cry anymore so she shut her mouth and blinked furiously.

The woman's face changed, though not being familiar with it Jasmine couldn't say how, and she set down the datapad she'd been holding and sat herself on a stool by the bed. “I'm sorry,” she said gently, which only made Jasmine want to cry more. “We were so concerned with making sure you survived that we hadn't quite gotten around to deciding how to handle everything else. I'm sorry, dear.”

And something in her professional sorrow overcame Jasmine's fragile will and she was crying again, and the woman removed the IV so that she could curl on her side and hold herself and sob, and she felt the woman's hand gently resting on her hair and she didn't want to be in space and she didn't want to be with doctors she wanted to be _home_ , she wanted to be waking up and going downstairs and complaining to her mother and dodging her brother's attempts to mess with her hair and she would even put up with having to go outside with too many layers and too much heat to take the train to town with her father to see her other brother in his stupid new job that took him so far away. She wanted to see them again she wanted to tell them she loved them she wanted to promise that she was happy the way things were she wanted—

“I'm sorry, dear,” the woman said again, her tone slightly different, “but I'm afraid they're going to want to ask you what happened.”

Jasmine stopped mid-snotty-sniffle and blinked, and the woman helped her to sit up, handed her a handkerchief—a real cloth handkerchief—to dry her eyes, though every time she tried to breathe she hiccupped and fresh tears spilled from her eyes and onto—her grandmother's quilt, and how or why someone had grabbed it was beyond her and she couldn't breathe all over again, but the woman's hand on her back steadied her, and so when the doors opened with a quiet _whoosh_ and two men in crisper uniforms entered. One of them nodded at the woman, who gently patted her back again and then stood and left the men to sit on the bed next to Jasmine's, one of them folding his hands in his lap and staring at her, the other activating his omni-tool, clearly prepared to take notes.

In the end, her testimony wasn't particularly useful; she hadn't heard when the attack started, nor seen any of the ships, nor been able to identify the slavers' uniforms or markings. They couldn't tell her whence or why the slavers had come, only that Mindoir was in the Attican Traverse, as though that explained everything; her parents had taught her every star system in the region, but none of the galactic politics involved. She learned they'd found two dead batarians in the living room, and Leo's body at the spaceport, but not her father's, that the likelihood of finding any other survivors was slim at best, that for all intents and purposes she was an orphan, entrusted to the Systems Alliance.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” her interrogator said, standing; the other officer followed suit, closing his omni-tool as he did so. “On Elysium you'll be entrusted to the foster system until such time as we can notify your family on Earth.” He paused, looking down at her, and she didn't like what she felt in his gaze, as foreign to her as it was. “You're a hero, Miss Shepard,” he said, but all she heard in his voice was pity; pity for her dead family, pity for her freak condition, pity for a girl too cowardly and sick to die with the rest, and she was glad when he left.

The woman came back and immediately made her lie back down, not commenting on the tears still streaming down her face even though she tried to stop them, bustling around with displays and finally coming back with a white cylinder that appeared to have some kind of handle attached to it. “This is a muscle relaxer for the nystagmus,” she said, and before Jasmine could yelp she'd given her the shot. “Its effects wear off over time, though. You'll need something more permanent to truly correct your vision.”

Jasmine hesitated, working around the lump in her throat, but here was a doctor and maybe finally she would have some answers. “I read about genetic mods,” she said, and part of her was surprised at how clear her voice sounded.

“Oh, those would certainly do,” the doctor said, brushing her pale hair away from her face. “A bit tricky to pay for in your situation, though. The Alliance might do it for you.”

“Because I belong to them?” Her voice cracked on the question.

“As a ward of the state, perhaps, but...” The woman studied her, much as the officer had, but Jasmine felt less like a lab rat and more like...a puzzle. Still embarrassing, but not as cold. “Would you like some advice?”

She shrugged, and so the doctor sat on the stool next to the bed and leaned forward, closer to eye level, close enough that Jasmine could focus on her steady gaze. “Enlist in the Alliance. You're a strong girl, and they could use someone like you and—stop shaking your head. The Alliance needs soldiers with experience with life in the colonies, as exotic as it seems to the rest of us, and they'll take care of your medical needs in exchange for your service. And,” she leaned back a little, her voice turning less urgent, more thoughtful, “you'll get to travel the stars.”

Jasmine blinked, feeling the crust of salt forming on her cheeks, sniffing. “I've never seen them.”

“Oh, but you will,” the doctor said, smiling. “And you know, even after all these years, I've never tired of looking at them.”

They sat in silence, the doctor lost in her faint smile, Jasmine torn between sorrow and the glimmer of hope turning itself over in her mind. “Well,” the doctor said at last, “your head's all healed up, so I suggest you get some rest. We'll be at Elysium in about a day. If you need anything, tap that red button there,” she gestured to the other side of the bed, “and I or one of my assistants will come to you.”

She stood, and Jasmine watched her go until the paleness of her hair started to bleed into the paleness of the wall, and then suddenly she said, “I'm not strong.”

The doctor turned, too far away for Jasmine to read her expression, but the smile remained in her voice. “To survive as long as you have with your condition? I beg to differ.”

Jasmine shook her head, but the doctor continued, her voice different. “You know, on most planets, you wouldn't even have been born, not like this, anyway. Your parents must have loved you very much.”

Jasmine turned away from the door, away from the doctor's quiet, “I'm sorry,” away from the stars and the light and the rest of the ship, curled beneath her grandmother's quilt and the warm blurry memory of her mother's smile and the twinkle in her father's eyes and she was _alone_ , alone in a galaxy that didn't want someone like her, except—

Except the doctor seemed to think the Alliance might. Which was absurd, because what use was a soldier who couldn't see, but maybe if she _could_ see—if she could have seen—she wouldn't have known what to do, didn't even know her mother could hold a shotgun, but if her mother could do it and if she could see then she could do it, and maybe next time—maybe some other girl and some other girl's mother—maybe she wouldn't have to be afraid.

She blinked, and though the room became no clearer, she knew _exactly_ what she wanted to do.

   
-.-.-

She was two years too young to enlist, but she spent those two years fighting for the right to try, visiting doctors, getting medical examinations, training the rest of her body so that once her eyes and skin caught up she'd be more than ready to pass any physical fitness test they threw at her. Her inheritance, plus insurance for the damages sustained, turned out to be enough to cover her expenses, and the few public appearances she made thanking her Alliance rescuers (while conveniently neglecting to mention that they hadn't arrived in time to rescue anyone else, but she was going to change all that) helped as well. She fell asleep listening to the old fairy tales and woke up crying; the memories of her family's faces grew dim, but they'd never been all that clear to begin with. What she _did_ remember was her father's encouragement and her mother's instruction, her brothers' teasing and protection all rolled together into a feeling of _love_ , a place to which she retreated whenever she felt people staring or whispering or wondering why she didn't _do_ something about herself. They didn't know the plan. She did.

And finally it all came together, and she stood before the enlistment officer's desk and signed a contract conditional upon her medical treatment, three years in exchange for the normal genetic modifications, and then she sat in the geneticist's office, trying to still her nervous limbs as her eyes roved with restless curiosity, wondering what it would look like— _after_.

“Private Shepard? I'm Dr. Steele,” the doctor said as he entered, flipping through various sheaves of paper. “You're here for the regular modifications, along with corrective modifications for albinism—yes, yes I definitely see it,” he said, his tone not quite professional. Jasmine was used to doctors and the like trying desperately to conceal their desire to poke and prod at her like a lab rat; she wasn't ready for what he said next. “Have you decided what color you want your hair to be?”

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Hair color,” he said, turning on a display in the corner, scrolling through various readouts, as a tech came in wheeling a— _thing_ , large with tubes and wires. “Corrective modifications are much more difficult at your age—better to catch these things younger—if it's just a matter of the allele activation you'll probably end up with your mother's hair—records say she was a brunette? But if we have to do more invasive correction you'll have a choice, so speak now—”

“What are you _talking_ about?” Jasmine said, her fingers curling at the edge of the bed.

The doctor stopped and looked at her, close enough that she could see his raised eyebrows. “You're the kid that's spent two years fighting for this, right?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“And you never looked into what it actually involved?” he said. “Albinism is a lack of pigment. Correcting it means restoring pigment. Simple. Easy. I could even make it flashier, give you actual black skin, probably, if you really wanted it—”

“I don't want pigment,” she said, crossing her legs. “I just want to _see_.”

The tech paused in untangling tubes in order to exchange a look with the doctor, one Jasmine couldn't make out. “Look,” the doctor said, “This is—this is what it is. If you just want eye surgery, that's ophthalmology, that's _not_ my department, but frankly, you'll be better off if—”

“I don't _want_ to be better off,” she said, equally testy. “I just want to see.”

“You want to be an Alliance soldier? You're not going to be an Alliance—”

“Give me the basic mods, then,” she said. “But no pigment.”

“I don't know how you expect to be able to see anything,” he said, throwing the haptic display from the wall to the machine, turning non-material knobs with a force even she could see. “But I'll let you fight that out with Medical. One set of basic soldier mods, coming up.”

She left feeling as though her stomach had turned inside out and filled her with sand, but she left pale and seeing a blurry world, and the enlistment officer yelled at her and then made several calls while she stood straight and still and unblinking, waiting for the verdict.

“You are the luckiest damn soldier,” the officer said after his final conversation. “They'll do implants, but it's gonna cost you ten years of your life.”

Ten years of the rest of her life, in order to stay the way her mother had wanted her to be. “Done,” she said, and the officer continued cursing her as he drew up the new contract and deleted the old one, and then she signed her name again and donned the dark glasses that dimmed the world and stepped into the Elysian sunshine, where a car waited to take her to the surgery center. The officer driving the car informed her that if she hadn't been such a freak sob story, nobody would've cared to do anything for her, but she ignored him, watching the blurry world go by outside and wondering what it really looked like—wondering if there was, in fact, a world that existed beyond the blurs, or if she was getting her hopes up for nothing—but she'd signed her name, and it was too late for doubt.

“You're lucky,” the receptionist at the surgery center said, “we had a cancellation,” and so the orphan of Mindoir filled out the liability paperwork and then sat in the prep room as various techs and assistants came through, subjecting her to an eye exam, a 3D rendering of her eyes, more tests than she really understood as necessary, until finally the ophthalmologist herself swept in, her omni-tool chirping at her as she sat herself across from Jasmine with the briefest of introductions and immediately began shining blindingly bright lights in her eyes.

“We don't normally do this on such short notice,” she said, ignoring Jasmine's yelps and involuntary attempts to escape her torture. “It'll be a day or two before we're able to do the actual surgery, since every implant is unique to the wearer—and you're not just a routine corneal replacement, oh no, you're retinas _and_ irises _and_ choroids and it's cheaper to just give you a whole new eye, though I've got orders here to give you the best eyes on the market, and then there's the neuro stimulation to compensate for all the years you couldn't focus at distance, but we can do that while you're under, we've got a neurologist in-house, so nothing to sweat there, just the timing—you're damn lucky, you know that?”

Eyes watering, heart full, Jasmine said, “Yeah. I am.”

   
-.-.-

In the end, she was under for twelve hours, a blissful period of nothingness followed by a frustrating day of being blindfolded and under close supervision. They'd shaved part of her head, and the stubble under the blindfold itched, and of course when the neurologist returned to do his laproscopic check of her optic nerves it was uncomfortable, but finally he pronounced everything growing just as it ought to be, and so they took her to the hotel room in which she'd lived since gaining her emancipation, where they removed the blindfold and the ophthalmologist said, “Open your eyes.”

She did, and the room was dark, but the little light the ophthalmologist held up was— _bright_ , yes, but not painfully so. “Everything will still be blurry for a few days, as the connections settle,” the neurologist said, “but it should come into focus by the end of next week.”

“Output reads are all good,” the ophthalmologist said. “I forgot to mention—the default eye color is brown, but if you've got a preference, I can set it—”

“Red,” Jasmine said immediately, and the silence that followed was a bit uncomfortable.

“Are you sure? Because purple's really—”

“People are already going to be staring at me,” she said, not mentioning her brother's blood on her hands, the thought that any advantage on the battlefield was one she ought to take. “I'd like red, if you have it.”

The ophthalmologist sighed, and then for a moment Jasmine had the weirdest feeling that she was pressing _on her eyeballs—_ a feeling of pressure, but not pain, though it seemed like it should have hurt, and then she heard a tiny whir, and the pressure receded. “Red like you want it,” the ophthalmologist said. “I should warn you that it's not exactly regulation.”

“Thank you,” Jasmine said. “How long until I can go outside?”

“It'll be another day,” the neurologist said. “You'll have to be supervised. There's a lamp in here you can turn on, but I'd recommend waiting at least another four hours—focus on this little guy,” he said, pressing the small light into her hand, “and then see how it goes.”

“Thank you,” Jasmine said again, and then she closed her eyes as they left her alone in the darkness. She lay down on the bed, atop her quilt, and turned on her omni-tool, idly scrolling through as it read out various titles—she'd have to turn that feature off, she thought, it wouldn't do her any good to have it announcing her position—stopping it on Spenser's description of the battle between the Redcrosse Knight and the dragon. She dozed through the description of the dragon's terrible armor, waking as the knight healed his wounds with the balm of life, and decided she'd been patient long enough.

She sat herself before the vanity and turned on the small lamp, and even that was so bright she couldn't help but cry out and shut her eyes. But she screwed up her courage and opened them, one at a time, slowly letting in the light, and for the first time in her life her eyes _adjusted_ , and she saw herself in the mirror.

She was pale—she'd always known she was pale, but she'd never appreciated _how_ pale, never seen what she looked like perfectly still, though her new eyes twinkled—an electric spark that still reminded her of her father, and she saw the thin line of her nose, with its little upturned tip, and the shadow beside her nostril lay still, was its own pool of darkness against her bright skin, didn't bleed into the fuller curve of her lips—lips that were pale, but she could do something about that, she thought. And her hair was half-gone, a stripe across the top from one ear to another, but it was pale too, and glossy, and she thought she was perhaps pretty, and she _knew_ her mother had thought her beautiful.

Her chrono softly beeped the hour—late evening, late enough that—she couldn't resist; she slipped her grandmother's quilt off the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders as she made her way over to the window, to the thick light-blocking curtains that shielded her skin from the sun, and she cracked them open, just a peek—

And Elysium at night was _bright_ , a torch burning, a jewel of humanity—but she looked _up_ , and there, far in the dark night's distance— _there_ , so far that her eyes could only focus for a minute, that her brain hurt trying to figure it out even as every part of her stretched to see it— _there_ they were, stars, just above her head. Just out of reach, but not for long.

Her fingers tightened on her grandmother's quilt, a universe unto itself, pieced together one stitch at a time in her mother's kitchen hidden deep in her father's mists, and she stood on the cusp of her parents' dream; stars spread out in an endless sky around her, and she was going to see them all.


End file.
